


Full Moon

by sullenhearts



Category: Emmerdale
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-25 02:55:31
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,538
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12026631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sullenhearts/pseuds/sullenhearts





	Full Moon

Robert really hadn’t meant to be walking past The Mill so late. It was dropping cold, the summer turning to the autumn, and he’d had to pull on his wax jacket as he’d stepped out of Victoria’s. He’d needed a breather. He loved his sister more than almost anyone on earth, but night after night of watching rubbish TV with her had begun to take its toll. He missed Aaron and Liv too much – he missed the two of them squabbling over what was for tea and what they would watch. He’d been in the playground, watching the stars, breathing in the cold air. There weren’t many stars out; the full moon was so bright that it obscured them. The moonlight shone over the village, making it look genteel and beautiful. It was still home, no matter how Robert ever felt about it. 

He was making a meandering way back to Victoria’s. There was a light on in the porch of The Mill, and a dimmer one in the living room. Robert’s stomach twisted. He wanted to be inside, in the warmth. He should text Liv, see if she’d talk to him yet. 

The door opened. Robert looked up quickly, thinking that he’d speak to either of them, would go over and try to have a quick chat. But there were two people. Two men. Aaron and someone else, someone Robert didn’t know. He moved a little bit, trying to slink more into the shadows. Aaron looked across at where he was standing and Robert froze, but then he heard Aaron’s laugh as he turned his attention back to the other man.

Robert couldn’t see him clearly, just dark hair and dark clothing. They were chatting quietly, and Aaron kept laughing, a little soft laugh that made Robert want to run over there and force this stranger away from him. That laugh should be for _him_ , not some random stranger. Where had they even met? In the pub? Maybe. At work? Possibly. Robert’s stomach twisted again. This wasn’t fair. It wasn’t fair. And the most unfair thing about it was that it was all his fault. 

Don’t kiss, he thought, as the chatter went silent. It was an intimate date, Aaron inviting someone into the house, especially if Liv was there. Had they been out before? Had this guy agreed to go to a gay pub for a few bevvies? That was something he could’ve easily done for Aaron, something he should’ve done. Yeah, it wasn’t his scene, but you were supposed to do those kinds of things for people you loved.

If he ever got another chance, he swore to a god he didn’t really believe in that he would take Aaron to every gay club and pub in Yorkshire _and_ Lancashire if that made Aaron happy. He’d dance on podiums. He’d do whatever it took, and he’d be happy to do it because living like this, without him, was too painful. 

They didn’t kiss, although there was definitely a moment when they could have, and the stranger – who had by now taken on the chiselled good looks of George Clooney in Robert’s mind – leant in and hugged Aaron quickly. Then he walked down the path out of The Mill, and up the street towards the bus stop. 

Robert waited, watching Aaron watch him walk away. The only sound was the tap of the guy’s boots on the road. Aaron tipped his face to the moonlight, a gesture so sweet that Robert had to turn away.

He should walk away now. Walk the other way round and go back to Victoria’s. Make her a cup of tea and open the packet of Jaffa Cakes he’d seen her stash earlier. But he felt frozen to the spot, still watching Aaron. 

He was pathetic. Officially, a lost cause.

Aaron turned and went back inside, closing the door behind him. Robert imagined he could hear it lock, too. 

Maybe Aaron was right now putting the kettle on for a late night cuppa for him, Maltesers hot chocolate for Liv. 

Robert checked his phone. It wasn’t even half past nine. That had to be a good sign, didn’t it? That their date had ended so early? He’d wait a few minutes, and then he’d knock on the door and say he was passing. 

He managed three minutes before he was striding towards The Mill, through the gate and down the path. Past Aaron’s car, past the space where his own should’ve been. The porch light was still on. Robert knocked, three times, and then fidgeted, the cold hitting him with the nerves.

Aaron was smiling when he opened the door, but maybe he’d been expecting the guy back, maybe he thought there’d been a problem with the busses or something, even though Robert had already heard the hiss of the bus doors as they’d opened. Robert wanted to know this guy’s name, wanted to know everything about him including why he thought he was good enough for Aaron. 

Aaron’s smile didn’t fade when he saw Robert, but it transformed into one of politeness, like the smile you gave someone in a shop. Not the smile you gave your husband. Not that Aaron considered himself that, now. Robert had Aaron’s wedding ring tucked in a hanky in his top drawer, had had it there ever since Aaron had given it back a few weeks ago. He was still wearing his own, and he didn’t care if that made him look pathetic. 

“Robert,” Aaron said. A statement, not a question, not an invitation in. 

“Alright? I was just passing…”

“No one passes this way.”

“Well, I went a weird way round the village, didn’t I?”

“What do you want?”

“I was considering how nice a cuppa and a biscuit sounded, actually.” Robert tried to sound light, jokey, maybe even a bit flirty. 

It sort of worked. Aaron rolled his eyes, turned, picked up his jacket, shrugged it on and stepped outside, closing the door behind him. 

Okay, so he wasn’t going to be allowed inside, or to see Liv, but Aaron was going to give him at least the time of day. 

“How’ve you been?” Robert asked. Aaron started his way up the path and on to the street so Robert followed him, falling into step with him. 

“Alright, yeah. You?”

“Not so bad.” 

“Taking an evening constitutional, were you?”

“Something like that. Victoria doing my head in, you know.”

“She just cares.” Aaron rubbed a hand over his chin, making a rasping noise on his beard. “Do you want a drink?”

“Pub? Yeah. Course.” 

Aaron went in the back way. Robert followed him, immediately hit by the sound of a busy pub and the heat from inside. 

“Stay here,” Aaron said, and made his way into the bar. 

Nothing had really changed since Robert had last been in here, although it had been a while. There was a noise upstairs and he jumped, but then realised it was just Noah crossing the landing. 

Aaron came back after five minutes with a bottle of whiskey in his hand. “Outside be okay? It’s heaving in there and I sort of don’t want the aggro.”

“Course,” Robert said, and went outside. The beer tables looked strange in the moonlight, like an abandoned school or somewhere else you shouldn’t be. 

Aaron sat down at one and drank a slug from the bottle. It was half empty, one of the ones from behind the bar that hung upside down, its sticker on the wrong way up. 

“Does your mum know you took that?” Robert asked, and sat down next to him on the bench, far enough away to be polite. 

“She’ll live,” Aaron said, and passed the bottle over.

There was something oddly intimate about drinking from the same bottle as him. Robert coughed on the first mouthful, but drank another. He passed it back. “How’s Liv?”

“Oh, gobby as ever. Can’t believe it’s a new year at school already.”

“She’ll be passing her exams and leaving home before you know it.”

“Probably.” Aaron rubbed his hand over his face again. “What do you really want?”

“Nothing,” Robert said. “Just missed you, really. I saw the light was on, so I knocked.”

“I had a date.”

“Yeah?” Robert swallowed, hoping his tone of voice sounded okay. 

“Weird, innit? I kept thinking about how I had to tell you about it. I didn’t though, did I.”

“Course not. Thanks, though. I appreciate it.”

“He wasn’t my type.”

“Not so debonair as me?”

Aaron laughed. “Definitely not so blonde. And his clothes didn’t have stupid elbow patches on ‘em.”

“Cheeky.” Robert, emboldened, leant over and took the bottle back, and stayed closer to Aaron, close enough to smell him. 

He missed that smell.

“I miss you,” Aaron said.

“I miss you, too. We could, you know, we could try again…”

Aaron took a deep breath. He picked the bottle out of Robert’s fingers and took a swig. “We’re having a drink aren’t we?”

“Oh, it’s a date is it?” Robert smiled, turning fully towards Aaron. 

“Well,” Aaron said, and knocked his knee against Robert’s. “The moon’s out, it’s not raining…”

“Yeah,” Robert said very seriously. “It’ll do, won’t it?”


End file.
